I have been running into an interesting phenomenon – more and companies are taking steps to conceal their major construction/renovation filings made with local governments. It has been going on for a while, but seems to be increasing in the last 2-3 years.

That raises two, no, three questions: Why, How, and What Can I Do About It?

Why?

Major construction/renovation filings with local governments, such as building permits, zoning applications as well as applications for state waivers, such as dealing with highway/rail access or environmental issues, are all “tells”. That is, they indicate the coming of an important action which the target, your competitor, does not want the public, and certainly its competitors, to know.

To be fair, such actions usually do not prevent the release of such information – but they substantially delay that release, whether to competitors or to the local press.

How?

Here we are not talking about abusing open records acts by tactics such as improperly claiming ordinary data is confidential or a trade secret. What is done is making the filings under other names, to foil inquiries for or even attention paid to these records. That is done in at least two ways. One is to make them under the name of a subsidiary not identified with the parent. Another is to have another party to the transaction, such as the company managing the construction project, make the filings under its own name.

Cute.

What Can You Do About It?

Well, not a lot. If you suspect that a competitor is going to engage in such a project on an existing site, you can ask the local government for filings covering the current address, as well as adjacent properties. If the issue is a competitor which may be building a new facility at a new address, then try to determine what areas are likely sites, and then follow real estate sales and leases on a micro level – checking local papers every week for “suspicious” transactions, and then drilling down at the municipal or county level, as appropriate.

Defense against CI is always improving which is why our CI strategies and processes must always try to get better, too.